Desolation Row
by Zappanale
Summary: The story of Murdoc's jail time in Mexico.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: I think--or hope--that I wrote Murdoc a little differently than most people do. If I failed in this regard, then I apologize.

Dr. Filth, he keeps his world  
Inside of a leather cup  
But all his sexless patients  
They're trying to blow it up  
Now his nurse, some local loser  
She's in charge of the cyanide hole  
And she also keeps the cards that read  
"Have Mercy on His Soul"  
They all play on penny whistles  
You can hear them blow  
If you lean your head out far enough  
From Desolation Row

1

The first thing Murdoc was aware of that morning was the greasy skinned woman lying to his left, and the banging on the door.

It was a cheap place in a town called San Dimas—as in Dimas 'the good thief'—and the bassist has spent the past two months there, boozing and whoring and occasionally stealing and smuggling, trying to make something happen. And something happened.

"Hell's bells, I'm up, I'm up!" He groaned and grunted, standing from the bed, working his way into his jeans and Acapulco shirt, slipping on his 'cross', and trying to remember the events of the night before. The knocking stopped for a second, and Murdoc heard some hushed conversation on the other side.

The night before. He remembered losing at cards with a bunch of Mexican crooks—he'd almost been stomped as well, but made it out of that dive before harm came his way—he remembered coming to this whorehouse and passing dud checks out, he—

The checks.

Sweet Satan.

"Ah, uh, oh _fuck_, just, uh, jus' one second!" he yelled through the door, trying to find his shoes. His hard-edged voice and accent seemed out of place in this room, which was colorful and brightly lit. The prostitute, a full lipped big-breasted young woman, was laughing now as she watched the green-skinned red-eyed bassist try to find his shoes.

He didn't find them in time.

The door cracked open, its frame splitting, and four cops swarmed him. Murdoc grabbed one of his Cuban heeled shoes by the toe and used it as a sort of club, hitting one officer below the eye and another in the groin before he made it to the window, broke it, and jumped through it and out onto a wooden fire escape. Two gunshots came from behind him, and he felt a bullet whizzing past his ear. The bassist began to run, cursing all his years of bad living.

He made it to the street, and was turning the corner when a billy club struck him in the stomach. Murdoc let out a thick groan and slumped forward, clutching his stomach. But it ended soon enough when a boot struck his forehead and everything went black.

He woke up an hour later, laying in a cell, while a fat man in a suit spoke to him in hushed tones. It took Murdoc a second, to sit up, his back creaking, and when he reached for his cigarettes he groaned. They were gone.

And gradually he realized, from the bits of English he could pick up from the words of the suited-fatty outside of the bars, he may go to prison for quite a while.

"This," Murdoc began, chewing a nail with his gnarly pointed teeth, "May be an issue."

The trial was a joke. Murdoc sat in his Acapulco shirt, smoking a cigarette, listening to the judge rain down fire and brimstone, and eventually he said, "Listen, listen, listen…surely you have better things to do than harp on about my fuckin' morality, you fish-faced old greaseball!"

He got five to ten for check fraud and assault on an officer, and as he left the courtroom he tried to take a piss on the bailiff, who promptly knocked him out with a left hook.

The ride to the prison was slow and bumpy going, it being through the desert and all, and when Murdoc saw the prison facility he cursed and began to mutter. The prison was large and foreboding with spiky looking guard towers surrounding it, and as the bus rolled to a stop and inmates began to walk down the caged corridor to the admittance area, the Mexican, Russian, Irish—the fuck?—and American inmates began to yell things, mostly sexual and violent. Murdoc ignored them, mumbling and grunting curses now and then.

They checked him for contraband--checked him everywhere, if you know what I mean--and then led him off to his cell, with a pair of freshly laundered prison clothing and a pair of sneakers.

Murdoc sat on his bunk and looked over at his cellmate, a tall, fat Mexican with slicked back hair and a toothless grin.

A raven--or is it a crow?--fluttered to the barred window and perched there, staring at Murdoc with obsidian eyes. Murdoc grinned.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note: Well, Chapter two, only a day afterwards. I forgot to mention in the first chapter, Gorillaz belongs to their creators and such. Anyway...cheap thrills, anyone?**

**2**

For Murdoc, the days went slowly, and he hated it.

The Mexican prison was in bad shape, all the toilets clogged and disease ridden, the prisoners angry and violent, the food mucky and disgusting, the guards vicious, the health care nearly non-existent. Couldn't even get cigarettes.

He mostly sat in his bunk during the day, listening to music play in his head, trying to write songs and failing. His creative juices--if they'd ever existed--were dry nowadays.

He had his first fight seven days into his sentence.

They came for him in the shower, three fat Mexicans, one bald, one with wavy hair, the third with a full beard. Wavy Hair hit him first, a powerful right that dug into Murdoc's stomach and sent him to the floor, gasping. They began to kick him and punch him and savage him, and were about to indulge in the thing men do in prison to other men when Murdoc kicked in Wavy Hair's kneecap and chewed off his nose.

People mostly left him alone after that. Some called him Cannibal, and some, because of his eye and strange teeth, called him 'Diablo'. Murdoc found it cliche and cheesy

The months crept by. Two, three, then four. He was going crazy, nothing to do all day, no women, no booze, no music, no NOTHING. He got in two more fights, and 'won' both, because of all the friends he'd made. Like Oscar Meza and Reynoldo Ramirez. Mexican gangsters, drug dealers from Mexico City.

Five more months. Murdoc got a job in the prison laundry, but mostly spent his time there stealing extra clothes, which he'd sell for cigarettes with Ramirez and Meza.

A year had gone by. Murdoc was counting the days now, smoking a Marlboro and cursing.

And working out a plan. A plan that would require the help of Ramirez and Meza, a plan that would answer all his prayers.

18 months into his sentence, he pitched the plan to the two Mexican thugs.


End file.
